LETTER FROM CAIRO

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LETTER FROM CAIRO about President Hosni Mubarak. "Sadat was good theatre," says Muhammad Sid Ahmed, an engaging artistocrat and Marxist, who is a prominent columnist for Al Ahali, a left-wing newspaper. "But he did something that had never been done before. He put the leaders of every political tendency into jail. In the past, one imprisoned leaders of parties judged disruptive or too strongly opposed, but that never included all the opinion-makers and opinion reflectors." Sid Ahmed was referring to the mass arrests of political opponents, real or imagined, in September of 1981. He himself left Egypt before the arrests. He says Mubarak "is committed by temperament and belief to making Egypt a democracy. "Al Ahali is among those most hostile to the government,O says Sid Ahmed. The press is now freerer than at any time in the country's history. Al Ahali recently carried an editorial accusing the government of torturing some political prisoners. When asked where the limits on the press's freedom lay, Sid Ahmed said that the government was fair game but not the President himself. Of Egypt's identity crisis, he says, "We wonder who we are. We aren't part of the Arab world. We're tied to the U.S. now, but we have no leverage with the U.S. We made a peace treaty with Israel, but we have no influence with Israel. Who are we? What are we for? What are we against?"